Microsoft releases new Windows 10 preview with Edge, Fluent, display, and Registry Editor improvements

Microsoft today released a new preview for PCs with improvements to Edge, Skype, Diagnostic Data Viewer, video, typing insights, font, security, Task Manager, accessibility, container, and mixed reality. This build is from the RS5 branch, which represents the Windows 10 update the company plans to release later this year.

Windows 10 is being developed as a service, meaning it receives new features on a regular basis. Microsoft has released five major updates so far: November Update, Anniversary Update, Creators Update, Fall Creators Update, and April 2018 Update.

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Edge has received richer learning tools in Reading View, including additional themes, the ability to change the color for parts of speech, and a line focus option to improve focus while reading an article by highlighting sets of one, three, or five lines. There’s also a new consent box for saving Autofill data (password and payment icons, improved messaging, and highlighting of options) and PDF toolbar improvements (just hover your cursor at the top to see the tools).

Microsoft’s Fluent Design has received a depth aspect in the form of shadows “to help improve user focus.” Many of the default modern popup type controls will now have shadows.

Display Settings now has a new Windows HD Color page for devices that can show high dynamic range (HDR) content, including photos, videos, games, and apps. The page reports your system’s HD Color capabilities and allows HD Color features to be configured on capable systems.

The Registry Editor now shows a dropdown as you type to help complete the next part of the path. You can also now hit Ctrl + Backspace to delete the last “word” (Ctrl + Delete will delete the next word).

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This desktop build also includes the following general bug fixes and improvements:

• Fixed the issue that had regressed the time it takes to remotely deploy and debug a UWP application to a local virtual machine or an emulator.
• Fixed an issue that could result in any surface that used reveal (including Start tiles and Settings categories) going totally white.
• Fixed an issue resulting in some Insiders seeing a 0x80080005 error when upgrading to recent flights.
• Fixed an issue where the “You are getting an update” dialog displayed unexpected extra characters.
• Fixed an issue where aborting a shutdown would break input in UWP apps until rebooting.
• Fixed an issue in recent flights where attempting to pin Settings categories to Start would either crash Settings or do nothing.
• Fixed an issue resulting in Ethernet and Wi-Fi Settings unexpectedly missing content in the last flight.
• Fixed a high hitting Settings crash impacting pages with Get Help content, including Touchpad Settings, Accounts Settings, and Family and Other Users Settings pages.
• Fixed an issue that could result in Sign-In Settings being blank sometimes.
• Fixed an issue where advanced keyboard settings might unexpectedly show “some settings are hidden by your org”.
• Fixed an issue where creating a system image from backup and restore in control panel would fail on x86 machines.
• Turned off the acrylic background in Task View – for now the design will return to how it shipped in the previous release, with acrylic cards instead. Thanks everyone who tried it out.
• Fixed an issue where after using voice to ask Cortana certain questions you may not be able to ask her a second question with voice.
• Fixed an issue that could result in explorer.exe crashing if certain apps were minimized when switching to tablet mode.
• Updated the Remove access icon On the Share tab in File Explorer to be more modern and made some tweaks to the Advanced security icon.
• Fixed an issue that could result in the console forgetting the cursor color on upgrade and it getting set to 0x000000 (black). The fix will prevent future users from hitting this issue, but if you’ve already been impacted by this bug, you’ll need to manually fix the setting in the registry. To do this, open regedit.exe and delete the ‘CursorColor’ entry in ‘Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console’ and any sub-keys, and re-launch your console window.
• Addressed an issue where the audio driver would hang for many Bluetooth speakers and headsets which support the Hands-Free profile.
• Fixed an issue resulting in the Microsoft Edge favorites pane scrolling sideways instead of up and down on mouse wheel in recent flights.
• Fixed a few issues highly impacting Microsoft Edge reliability in the last few flights.
• Fixed an issue resulting in Internet Explorer losing all settings and becoming unpinned from the taskbar with each of the last few flights.
• Fixed an issue resulting in ethernet not working for some Insiders using Broadcom ethernet drivers on older hardware in the last flight.
• Fixed an issue where remoting into a PC running the previous flight could result in just seeing a black window.
• Fixed an issue that could result in certain games hanging when typing into the chat window.
• Fixed an issue from the last flight where text predictions and shapewriting candidates wouldn’t appear in the touch keyboard’s candidate list until backspace is pressed while typing.
• Fixed an issue where when Narrator started you would be presented with a dialog that informed the user of the change to Narrator’s keyboard layout and the dialog might not take focus or speak after Narrator has started.
• Fixed an issue where when you changed Narrator’s default Narrator key to just caps lock the Insert key would continue to function until the caps lock key was used as the Narrator key or if the user restarts Narrator.
• Fixed an issue where if your System > Display > Scaling and layout is not set to 100%, some text might appear smaller after reverting “Make text bigger” value back to 0%.
• Fixed an issue where Windows Mixed Reality might get stuck after going to sleep and display a persistent error message in Mixed Reality Portal or a “Wake up” button that doesn’t work.

Today’s update bumps the Windows 10 build number for the RS5 branch from 17704 (made available to testers on June 27) to build 17711.

This build has 18 known issues:

• You may see some unexpectedly light colors in File Explorer and the Common File Dialog when in dark mode and/or dark on dark text.
• In certain cases on PCs with multiple monitors, all the windows may appear shifted “up” and the mouse responds to the wrong location. The workaround is use Ctrl + Alt + Del to bring up the task screen and then hit cancel. Repeat as necessary.
• When you upgrade to this build you’ll find that the taskbar flyouts (network, volume, etc) no longer have an acrylic background.
• Some users will not be able to enable/disable HDR display support.
• Applications that use ICC color profiles may encounter errors such as Access Denied. This includes the Color Management control panel, and color profile switching on certain Surface devices.
• When you use the Ease of Access Make Text bigger setting, you might see text clipping issues, or find that text is not increasing in size everywhere.
• You may find your secondary displays don’t render correctly. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and then cancel and that should resolve it.
• If you install any of the recent builds from the Fast ring and switch to the Slow ring – optional content such as enabling developer mode will fail. You will have to remain in the Fast ring to add/install/enable optional content. This is because optional content will only install on builds approved for specific rings.
• Narrator speech may fade when waking from sleep mode.
• When the Narrator Quickstart launches, Scan Mode may not reliably be on by default. To verify that Scan Mode is on, press Caps Lock + Space.
• When using Scan mode you may experience multiple stops for a single control. An example of this is if you have an image that is also a link.
• If the Narrator key is set to just Insert and you attempt to send a Narrator command from a braille display then these commands will not function. As long as the Caps Lock key is a part of the Narrator key mapping then braille functionality will work as designed.
• There is a known issue in automatic dialog reading where the title of the dialog is being spoken more than once.
• The state of a Narrator command such as toggling Scan Mode on and off, volume up and down, voice speed, changing verbosity and context verbosity commands may not be announced when executed.
• The framerate counter chart sometimes doesn’t show up correctly over known games.
• The CPU chart shows an incorrect percentage of usage in the top left corner.
• Charts in the performance panel don’t update immediately when clicking through tabs.
• The user’s gamerpic doesn’t display correctly, even after signing in.

As always, don’t install this on your production machine.

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